Cosmetology Salaries in 2026

How Much Do Cosmetology Careers Pay in 2026?

Cosmetology careers pay a median salary in 2026 of between $35,760 and $97,150, depending which of the six roles you enter, on May 2025 OEWS figures. The ordering below is not the ordering of how long the licenses take to earn, which is the useful thing to notice about it.

What Is the Hourly Pay for Cosmetology Careers?

Hourly pay for cosmetology careers runs from $17.19 to $46.71 at the median, and the hourly figure is the more honest one in this field. BLS converts between hourly and annual at 2,080 hours, which assumes full-time year-round work that a stylist building a column often is not doing.

Which Cosmetology Career Pays the Highest Salary in 2026?

The cosmetology career paying the highest median salary in 2026, setting the makeup artist series aside, is the salon manager at $48,590, followed by the esthetician at $45,330. Both beat the cosmetologist median of $35,790, and the esthetician license takes less time to earn than the cosmetology license in most states.

Every figure in this section is a national median from the May 2025 OEWS release, so the six are comparable with each other.

The medians understate what the trade can pay at the top. The top tenth of cosmetologists earns $71,190, roughly double the median, because commission and a rebooking client base move a stylist up the distribution in a way a salary does not.

How Much Does Cosmetology Pay Vary by State?

The median cosmetology salary varies by roughly 129% between the best and worst paying states that publish a figure: Washington at $59,510 against Louisiana at $26,030. None of that is adjusted for cost of living, and the states at the top of the list are expensive ones, so the gap in what the money buys is smaller than the gap in the money.

State medians come from the OEWS state estimates for 39-5012, which are published for every state with a large enough sample and withheld elsewhere.

Each salary page carries the full state table for its own role, and each state page carries the local figures alongside that state's licensed schools.

Why Do These Salary Figures Leave Out Self-Employed Workers?

These salary figures leave out self-employed workers because the OEWS survey collects from employers rather than from workers, so anyone without an employer is outside its frame. BLS states it in its own footnote rather than leaving it to be inferred: estimates do not include self-employed workers.

Most surveys carry that caveat and most of the time it barely matters. Here it does. Renting a chair makes a stylist self-employed for this purpose even though they are in the same salon every day, and BLS counts 15,000 barbers on payrolls nationally, which is plainly a fraction of the people cutting hair in barbershops. Treat every number on this site as the pay of employees, and treat the rest of the trade as unmeasured.

Where Can You See the Full Cosmetology Salary Range for Each Role?

Each page carries the full range and the state table for that role. The ranges below are the 10th to 90th percentile from the May 2025 OEWS release.

• Makeup Artist Salary

  $97,150 median · $23,360 to $167,470

  What makeup artists do

• Salon Manager Salary

  $48,590 median · $34,010 to $75,330

  What salon managers do

• Esthetician Salary

  $45,330 median · $29,580 to $82,050

  What estheticians do

• Barber Salary

  $38,210 median · $28,600 to $76,460

  What barbers do

• Cosmetologist Salary

  $35,790 median · $27,040 to $71,190

  What cosmetologists do

• Nail Technician Salary

  $35,760 median · $28,920 to $50,140

  What nail technicians do

Where Do the Figures on This Cosmetology Salaries Page Come From?

• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. National and state medians, percentiles and employment for all six occupations.
• OEWS questions and answers. Survey scope, the exclusion of self-employed workers, and how annual figures are derived from hourly ones.